by Hugh Howey
Page 36
He peeked under each of the tarps. Beneath one, he found loose tools and scattered parts, a drone partly disassembled or being repaired. Recent work? It was impossible to tell. There was no dust, but there wouldn’t be under the tarp. He walked the perimeter, looked for white foam pellets on the ground from any ceiling panels that may have been disturbed, checked the offices at the very back, looked for any places where the shelves might be scaled, any large bins high up. He headed toward the barracks and noticed the low metal hangar door for the first time.
Darcy made sure the safety was off. He gripped the handle on the door and threw it up, then crouched down and aimed his flashlight and pistol into the gloom.
He very nearly shot up someone’s bedroll. There was a rumpled pile of pillows and blankets that looked at first like a person sleeping. He saw more of the folders like the ones he’d helped gather from the conference room. This was probably where the man they’d snagged had been hiding. He’d have to show Brevard and get the place cleaned up. He couldn’t imagine living like that, like a rat. He shut the hangar and moved to the door down the wall, the one that led to the barracks. Opening it a crack, Darcy made sure the hall was clear. He moved quietly from room to room, sweeping each. No sign of habitation in the bunkrooms. The bathrooms were still and quiet. Eerie, almost. Leaving the women's, he thought he heard a voice. A whisper. Something beyond the doorway at the very end.
Darcy readied his pistol and stood at the end of the hall. He pressed his ear to the door and listened.
Someone talking. He tried the knob and found it unlocked, took a deep breath. Any sign of a man reaching for a weapon, and he would shoot. He could already hear himself explaining to Brevard what had happened, that he’d had a hunch, had followed a clue, didn’t think to ask for backup, had come down and found this man wounded and bleeding. He drew first. Darcy had been protecting himself. One more dead body and another case closed. That was his line if this went badly. All this and more flashed through his mind as he threw the door open and raised his weapon.
A man turned from the end of the room. Darcy yelled for him to freeze as he shuffled closer, his training ingrained and coming as naturally as a heartbeat. “Don’t move,” he shouted, and the man raised his hands. It was a young man in gray coveralls, one arm over his head and the other held limply at his side.
And then Darcy saw that something was wrong. Everything was wrong. It wasn’t a man at all.
••••
“Don’t shoot,” Charlotte pleaded. She raised one hand and watched this man approach her, a gun aimed at her chest.
“Stand up and step away from the desk,” the man said. His voice was unwavering. He gestured with his gun to indicate the wall.
Charlotte glanced at the radio. Juliette asked if she could hear her, asked her to finish what she was saying, but Charlotte didn’t test this man by reaching for the transmit button. She eyed the scattering of tools, the screwdrivers, the wire cutters, and remembered the gruesome fight from the day before. Her arm throbbed beneath the gauze wrapping. It hurt to raise her hand even to her shoulder. The man closed the distance between them.
“Both hands up. ”
His stance – the way he held his gun – reminded her of basic training. She did not doubt that he would shoot her.
“I can’t raise it any more than this,” she said. Again, Juliette pleaded for her to say something. The man eyed the radio.
“Who’re you talking to?”
“One of the silos,” she said. She slowly reached for the volume.
“Don’t touch it. Against the wall. Now. ”
She did as he said. Her one consolation was the hope that he would take her to her brother. At least she would know what they’d done with him. Her days of isolation and worry had come to an end. She felt a twinge of relief to have been discovered.
“Turn around and face the wall. Place your hands behind your back. Cross your wrists. ”
She did this. She also turned to the side and glanced over her shoulder at him, caught a glimpse of a white plastic tie pulled from his belt. “Forehead on the wall,” he told her. And then she felt him approach, could smell him, could hear him breathing, and thoughts of spinning around and putting up a fight evaporated as the tie cinched painfully around her wrists.
“Are there any others?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Just me. ”
“You’re a pilot?”
Charlotte nodded. He gripped her elbow and spun her around. “What’re you doing here?” Seeing the bandage on her arm, his eyes narrowed. “Eren shot you. ”
She didn’t respond.
“You killed a good man,” he said.
Charlotte felt tears well up. She wished he would just take her wherever they were going, put her back to sleep, let her see Donny, whatever came next. “I didn’t want to,” was her feeble defense.
“How did you get here? You were with the other pilots? It’s just … women don’t …”
“My brother woke me,” Charlotte said. She nodded at the man’s chest, where a Security emblem blazed. “You took him. ” And she remembered the day they came for Donny, a young man propping up Thurman. She recognized this man in front of her, and more tears came. “Is he … still alive?”
The man looked away for a moment. “Yes. Barely. ”
Charlotte felt tears track down her cheeks.
The man faced her again. “He’s your brother?”
She nodded. With her arms strapped behind her, she couldn’t wipe her nose, couldn’t even reach her shoulder to wipe it on her coveralls. She was surprised this man had come alone, that he wasn’t calling for backup. “Can I see him?” she asked.
“I doubt that. They’re putting him back under today. ” He aimed his gun at the radio as Juliette again called for some response. “This isn’t good, you know. You’ve put these people in danger, whoever you’re talking to. What were you thinking?”
She studied this man. He looked to be her age, early thirties, looked more like a soldier than a cop. “Where are the others?” she asked. She glanced toward the door. “Why aren’t you taking me in?”
“I will. But I want to understand something before I do. How did you and your brother … how did you get out?”
“I told you, he woke me. ” Charlotte glanced at the table where Donny’s notes lay. She had left the folders open. The map was on top, the Pact memo visible. The security guard turned to see what she was looking at. He stepped away from her and rested a hand on one of the folders.
“So who woke your brother?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” Charlotte was beginning to worry. Him not taking her in felt like a bad thing, like he was operating outside the rules. She had seen men in Iraq operate outside the rules. It was never to do anything good. “Please just take me to see my brother,” she said. “I surrender. Just take me in. ”
He narrowed his eyes at her, then turned his attention back to the folders. “What is all this?” He picked up the map and studied it, set it down and picked up another piece of paper. “We pulled crates of this stuff out of the other room. What the hell are you two working on?”
“Just take me in,” Charlotte begged. She was getting scared.
“In a minute. ” He studied the radio, found the volume, turned it down. He put his back to the desk and leaned against it, the pistol held casually by his hip. He was going to drop his pants, Charlotte realized. He was going to force her to her knees. He hadn’t seen a woman in several hundred years, was wanting to understand how to wake them up. That’s what he wanted. Charlotte considered running for the door, hoping he might shoot her, hoping he would either miss or hit her square—
“What’s your name?” he asked.
Charlotte felt tears roll down her cheeks. Her voice quivered, but she managed to whisper her name.
“Mine’s Darcy. Relax. I’m not going to hurt you. ”
Charlotte began to shake. It was exactly what she imagined a man would say before doing something vile.
“I just want to understand what the hell’s going on before I turn you over. Because everything I’ve seen today suggests this is bigger than you and your brother. Bigger than my job. Hell, for all I know, the moment I take you up to the office, they’re going to put me under and put you back to work down here. ”
Charlotte laughed. She turned her head and wiped the tears hanging from her jaw onto her shoulder. “Not likely,” she said. And she began to suspect that this man really wasn’t going to hurt her, that he was just as curious as he seemed. Her gaze drifted back to the folders. “Do you know what they have planned for us?” she asked.
“Hard to say. You killed a very important man. You shouldn’t be up. They’ll put you in Deep Freeze would be my guess. Alive or dead, I don’t know. ”
“No, not what they’re gonna do to me and my brother – what they have planned for all of us. What happens after our last shift. ”
Darcy thought for a moment. “I … I don’t know. Never thought about it. ”
She nodded to the folders beside him. “It’s all in there. When I go back to sleep, it won’t matter if I’m alive or dead. I’ll never get up again. Neither will your sister or mom or wife or whoever they have here. ”
Darcy glanced at the folders, and Charlotte realized his not taking her in right away was an opportunity, not a problem. This is why they couldn’t let anyone know the truth. If people knew, they wouldn’t stand for it.
“You’re making this up,” Darcy said. “You don’t know what will happen after—”
“Ask your boss. See what he says. Or your boss’s boss. And keep asking. Maybe they’ll give you a pod down in Deep Freeze next to mine. ”
Darcy studied her for a heartbeat. He set his pistol down and unbuttoned the top button on his coveralls. And then the next. He kept unbuttoning them down to his waist, and Charlotte knew she’d been right about what he planned to do. She prepared to jump him, to kick him between the legs, to bite him—
Darcy took the folders and slid them around his back, tucked them into his shorts. He began buttoning up his coveralls.
“I’ll look into it. Now let’s go. ” He picked up the gun and gestured toward the door, and Charlotte took a grateful breath. She walked around the drone control stations. Inside, she felt torn. She had wanted this man to take her in, but now she wanted to talk more. She had feared him, but now she wanted to trust him. Salvation seemed to come from being arrested, from being put back to sleep, and yet some other salvation seemed to lie within reach.
Her heart pounded as she was marched into the hallway. Darcy shut the door to the control room. She passed the bunkrooms and the bathrooms, waited at the end of the hall for him to open the door to the armory, her hands useless behind her back.
“I knew your brother, you know,” Darcy said as he held the door for her. “He never seemed like the sort. Neither do you. ”
Charlotte shook her head. “I never wanted to hurt anyone. We were only ever after the truth. ” She passed through the armory and toward the lift.
“That’s the problem with the truth,” Darcy said. “Liars and honest men both claim to have it. It puts people in my position in something of a predicament. ”
Charlotte pulled to a stop. This seemed to startle Darcy, who took a step back and tightened his grip on his pistol. “Let’s keep moving,” he told her.
“Wait,” Charlotte said. “You want the truth?” She turned and nodded at the drones beneath their tarps. “How about you stop trusting what people are telling you? Stop deciding who to believe with your gut. Let me show you. See what’s out there for yourself. ”
52
Donald’s side was a sea of purples, blacks, and blues. He held his undershirt up, his coveralls hanging from his hips, and inspected his ribs in the bathroom mirror. In the center of the bruise there was a patch of orange and yellow. He touched this – barely a brush of his fingertips – and a jolt of electricity shot down his legs and into his knees. He nearly collapsed, and it took a moment to gather his breath. He lowered his shirt gingerly, buttoned his coveralls up, and hobbled back to his cot.
His shins hurt from protecting himself from Thurman’s blows. There was a knot on his forearm like a second elbow. And every time a coughing fit seized him, he wanted to die. He tried to sleep. Sleep was a vehicle for passing the time, for avoiding the present. It was a trolley for the depressed, the impatient, and the dying. Donald was all three.
He turned out the light beside his cot and lay in the darkness. The cryopods and shifts were exaggerated forms of sleep, he thought. What seemed unnatural was more a matter of degree than of kind. Cave bears hibernated for a season. Humans hibernated each night. Daytime was a shift, each one endured like a quantum of life, all the short-term planning leading up to another bout of darkness, little thought given to stringing those days into something useful, some chain of valuable pearls. Just another day to survive.
He coughed, which brought bolts of agony to his ribs and flashes of light to his vision. Donald prayed to black out, to pass away, but the gods in charge of his fate were expert torturers. Just enough – but not too much. Don’t kill the man, he could hear his wounds whispering to one another. We need him alive so that he can suffer for what he’s done.
The coughing passed with the taste of copper on his lips, blood misting his coveralls – but he didn’t care. He laid his head back, soaked in sweat from pain and exertion, and listened to the feeble groans escaping his lips.